After attending a 3 days of "orientation-training" class at Hendrickson's facility, Hendrickson refuses to compensate any driver for attending the training class. I have 21 hours including waiting for a team driver to show up.
The Head recruiter Mr. Richard "Dick" McAndrew, said that these new trucks were purchased with Grant Money, part of some California clean air act program.
According to Dick, part of the deal these trucks cannot go outside of the state of California they must stay within the California boundaries. He told my class and another class that these trucks will average 5300-5700 miles each week, He said, they have so much freight theses trucks will only stop to fuel and drop and hook. Second big Lie trucking companies pay a solo company driver for transporting a load from point "A" to point "B" at the going rate of. 32-. 35 cents per mile. Being hired at Hendrickson in their new California truck program they are only seating team drivers so everything is split 50/50 what that truck earns is split by both drivers.
Companies like Hendrickson expects the truck driver to be on time and give up to 2 hours of their time at the loading dock and give up another two hours at a dock un-loading.
Where did this unwritten code or expectation come from?
Hendrickson will not entertain a request for what they call detention time until the truck driver has been at the dock for over 2 hours. For example if you were at a dock for 3.25 hours it is up to the driver to put in a request for any detention pay. Drivers are told that it is then up to the Shipper or Consignee to approve what they are willing to pay the truck, if any. Hendrickson pays only $10 dollars per truck per hour and again if your truck is a designated team, it works out to $5.00 per hours per driver. Again that is below the California minimum wage! Furthermore the driver is not being compensated for the other two hours of waiting!
I was only given $3.75 for that load as the payroll clerk. She said they only got approval for 3/4 of an hour detention. I pointed out to here that that pay rate is below the minimum wage and she said "hey, that's trucking!"
Not all companies are like this, In I was employed by a trucking company out of Utah that paid each truck $20 for being on time.
According to the California labor code Employees are to be given Meal Breaks and Breaks.
Are Commercial Truck drivers exempt from Meals and Breaks? Should Commercial Drivers be given break times and meal time?
If so then how are Commercial drivers compensated for those breaks?
I understand truck drivers are not like a diesel engine that can be fueled up and then run for the next 1500 miles. A truck driver needs to take a break, get a meal, use a restroom and hopefully get a shower each day. Any time the truck pulls off the hwy you are no longer driving at 55 mph. Pulling into the truck stop you may get lucky and get right into the pumps; most other times you will have to get into line and wait to fuel this will take up 15-45 minutes. The time you travel from point "A" to "B" has encountered a delay of 45 minutes to an hour, thus decreasing the rate of pay.
Every commercial truck driver is regulated by the Department of Transportation (DOT) they have enacted laws and rules to help ensure the safety of each truck driver. Yet at the local level you have corporations purposely out to avoid the basic welfare of the commercial driver, focusing upon the fact that they are moving a lot of freight across the state at the expense of the commercial driver's time. As truck drivers are paid for driving (transporting) a load from point "A" to point "B." On the log book drivers get paid from line #3 Driving. Any time a driver is on Line #4 ON DUTY (NOT DRIVING) The driver is not earning any compensation.
The time a diver is loading at a dock or waiting for someone to unload his truck the Driver is NOT being compensated for his or her time!
Why are drivers not compensated for the vehicle inspections and taking care of the truck securing of the load?
Here is the rub the dispatchers and recruiters strongly encourage driver to not log anything on line #4 or log the bare minimum, because that takes away from your available hours to work (drive their truck). This also encourages drivers to falsify their logbooks, to keep as much of their available time to work for line #3.
I was strongly encouraged by dispatch on to go back and rewrite my logbook so they could dispatch me to another load and keep our truck going and head us back to Sacramento.
I have more examples like this.
I would NOT Recommend this company in any way as a Driver, Mechanic, or a shipper looking for a shipping company.
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